I was considering purchasing a new SATA HD for an older server of mine (possibly 8 years old). I want to buy a terabyte for it, but am concerned about whether it'll be able to recognize a drive that size. I'm going to be connecting via a SATA controller PCI card. Will there likely be a problem?

August 5th, 2010, 06:39 PM

nihil

Hi rasem,

Hard to say without a bit more information. You need to look at:

1. Motherboard make model
2. BIOS date version

If there is a more recent version of the BIOS then I would get it before you start.

I would expect an 8 year old box to recognise a ITb drive. I say this because I have machines that age that recognise an externally docked drive that size.

OK that's USB2, but I would expect that your SATA controller will handle the job just as well.

A few questions:

1. Is this going to be the only drive or do you already have one in there that you want to keep?

2. What operating system and will you be reinstalling?

3. Do you have a 3.5" floppy drive?

Just trying to anticipate a few potential problems so I can advise of the solutions :)

August 5th, 2010, 09:53 PM

rasem

I won't be able to access the machine itself for another two weeks so I can't get that information.

1. I plan on retaining two drives that it's currently using. One is a 160GB and the other is a 300GB. Both of these are IDE drives.

2. I plan on installing some distribution of Linux. I was thinking either Ubuntu or SuSE.

3. Yes.

There's a local shop that are selling the 1TB SATA drives for $30 so I figured it might be a nice time to purchase some more room. That and I have an empty hot-swap bay. Oh so tempting.

August 6th, 2010, 08:27 PM

nihil

$30.....................BUY IT!!!

Hey, at that price, the little extra you might have to pay for an external USB hub would still make it well worthwhile?